Two Steps Forward

by Graeme Simsion

  The restaurant wasn’t open but the employee who had helped me the previous evening was there. She didn’t have soy or almond milk—and didn’t understand ‘fair trade’—but the espresso was hot and strong. Two euros: my first Camino expense. The extra hot water to make it drinkable was free.

  It took me a few minutes to locate the scallop-shell signs again. I ate one of the apples Camille had given me, lightening the pack as well as fuelling myself. Below me were clusters of houses in the crevices, and hamlets at the bottoms of the hills. Some of the houses higher up the hill looked larger. One, hard to see among the trees, might have been a château.

  After three hours on the trail, the scallop shells led me past the church into the main street of Tramayes, where there was a stream of people in and out of the supermarket. The other stores were closed. I followed signs to the public bathrooms and they were closed too.

  So was the tourist office.

  I took off my pack and looked at the notices in the window. I didn’t need much French to translate the prices, which started at twenty-five euros, except for what seemed to be a free pilgrims’ refuge. Small kitchen, toilet, hot water, shower. Wait, that was no hot water, no shower. I hadn’t showered since Camille’s. I wanted to cry.

  A couple a few years older than me stopped.

  ‘Puis-je vous aider?’ said the man—neat, fit-looking, with wiry grey hair. Can I help you?

  ‘Je ne parle français très bien.’

  ‘Je ne parle pas français très bien,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Need to get that one right.’

  ‘American?’ said the slim blonde woman in designer jeans.

  They introduced themselves as Richard and Nicole, Australians. They owned a vacation home in the village.

  ‘You’re doing the Camino!’ said Nicole.

  ‘Trying to.’

  ‘That’s France, I’m afraid,’ said Richard. ‘Everything’s closed on a Monday in this region. Elsewhere it’s whatever day of the week you happen to arrive. As we discovered.’

  ‘You walked the Camino?’

  ‘Last year. From here. Just on two thousand kilometres. Eighty-two days. Life-changing.’

  If they could walk to Santiago, I could make it to the Spanish border.

  ‘What were you looking for?’ said Nicole.

  ‘On the Camino or right now? Somewhere to stay. A map. Actually, anything. I’m a bit unprepared.’

  ‘We used the maps in the guidebooks. But we threw them out when we were finished with them.’

  Richard and Nicole exchanged glances.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay with us,’ said Richard. ‘Next town’s Grosbois—nineteen kays.’

  ‘Twenty-one, remember?’ said Nicole.

  ‘Regardless, you’d be mad to try to do it today.’

  Take what was offered, Monsieur Chevalier had said.

  We walked to a renovated stone farmhouse on the outskirts of town. When Nicole discovered I had spent the night in a church she was horrified, and ten minutes later I was soaking in the bath.

  Over a lunch of homemade potato-and-leek soup and Camino stories, I learned that Richard was a management consultant—and company director. It was hard not to squirm. I probably did when Nicole said she worked for Australia’s largest mining company. As a lawyer.

  She may have misread my expression. ‘It must be a bit scary doing this alone.’

  ‘I’m okay so far. Taking each day as it comes.’ Easy to say on Day Two. After a bath.

  ‘There’s a village every ten or so kilometres,’ said Nicole. ‘Usually less.’

  Richard smiled. ‘Multiply by five, divide by eight.’

  ‘About six miles,’ I said.

  ‘Right. Or you could start thinking in kilometres. It’s not a bad system.’

  I helped clean up, then found some printer paper and took it with my pencils into the courtyard. I sketched the house—but couldn’t resist putting my hosts in the foreground. Keith and the girls had always thought my cartoons were hilarious, but they were family. I’d made Nicole glamorous, yet there was a touch of Joan Collins. Richard was more Al Pacino.

  I needn’t have worried. ‘It’s so Richard!’ Nicole said.

  ‘So you,’ said Richard. He turned to me. ‘Are you okay if I put it on our website?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could draw something for our Christmas cards?’

  Nicole took me upstairs to see if any of their stuff would be of use and would not take no for an answer. However life-changing the experience had been, Nicole was over it. But she wanted their equipment to be put to good use. Or maybe just disposed of so they couldn’t use it again.

  ‘The trick,’ said Nicole, ‘is to pack light. I carried six kilograms and Richard had ten, including his computer.’

  ‘He took his computer?’

  ‘First lesson of the Camino: everyone does the Camino their own way.’

  Nicole pulled out a white ski jacket.

  ‘This is our daughter’s. She’s never going to wear it again. Don’t worry, that stuff around the hood isn’t fur. But it won’t be waterproof.’

  ‘I can’t possibly…’ But it was already in my hands. Then her daughter’s barely used walking shoes—a perfect fit—thermals, a pair of walking pants and a light plastic pair to go over the top when it rained. Do not walk in jeans. That would be lesson number…? She threw in an almost weightless silk sleeping bag, a towel which folded to the size of a large cell phone, and a packet of Compeeds—Band-Aids for blisters. And a two-cup thermos.

  Nicole emptied my cosmetic bag and put my toothbrush, toothpaste and tampons to one side. ‘Now,’ she said, pointing to the rest, ‘allow yourself one non-essential item.’

  I remembered my thoughts of earlier that day…but since when was deodorant non-essential?

  ‘This isn’t a hypothetical,’ Nicole said with a lawyer’s firmness.

  I picked out the deodorant stick.

  ‘What about the vitamins? I’ve been thinking about using the walk to go vegan.’

  ‘Your choice.’

  ‘I need my sketchpad and pens,’ I said, adding them to the pack.

  Nicole took out the deodorant. ‘It’s winter,’ she said. ‘When it gets warm, you’ll need sunblock too.’

  I left the room feeling like I’d had a full makeover. For the third time in a week, I was leaving stuff behind.

  I put Camille’s phone number in the plastic packet Nicole had given me, with my passport and credencial. In case I was found dead from vitamin deficiency.

  When they weighed my loaded pack, minus food, water and coffee, it was a bit over six kilograms. Thirteen pounds: a quarter of what I had checked in at LAX.

  And I needed to ask. ‘You’re from Sydney, right?’

  ‘I am. Richard’s from Adelaide,’ said Nicole.

  ‘Is Sydney far from Perth?’

  ‘About the same as New York is from LA. Why?’

  ‘I knew an Australian from Perth, years ago. Shane Willis.’ It was a long shot.

  She shook her head and gave me a wry smile.

  Next morning, Richard walked into the village with me and bought us coffee. He offered to pay for the Christmas-card sketches but didn’t insist when I said no.

  ‘Thank you for everything,’ I said. ‘I didn’t expect…’

  ‘Private wealth trickling down. See, it does work.’ He kept a poker face for a few moments, then laughed. ‘Keep an open mind. Go with the flow. The Camino walks you.’

  I had considered the physical challenge. I had thought of being alone and of the stuff I still needed to sort through. But a challenge to my world view, discovering corporate lawyers and company directors being generous and accepting of liberal vegetarians, had never occurred to me.

  10

  MARTIN

  On the Tuesday morning, I manoeuvred the cart down the stairs from my empty apartment, clipped the side rails to my hip belt, had breakfast at the Café du Centre and walked to the outdo
ors shop. The proprietor retrieved my package from behind the counter—exactly where I’d been looking before Zoe had drawn attention to me. Then, unemployed, unattached and free of debt to anyone, I headed down the main street of Cluny, pulling everything I owned towards Santiago de Compostela.

  The first kilometre of my journey was on the road, easy going for the cart. I had not yet loaded the maps into the army GPS, so had to rely on the signposts—stylised scallop shells, their radial lines converging to indicate the direction.

  As I walked along the left side of the road, facing the traffic, I discovered I was a curiosity. Drivers slowed for a look, and several called out Bon Chemin or Bon courage. A male driver of about my age pulled over.

  ‘You are walking the Chemin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To the border?’

  ‘Santiago.’

  ‘Formidable. Where did you buy this?’

  ‘I built it.’

  ‘So, it is a French design.’ He got out of the car and examined the cart. Formidable, again. If he had been a manufacturer of hiking equipment, my journey might have been over.

  As a scallop shell pointed me onto a climbing track and the morning fog lifted to reveal a cold, clear day, I had a feeling of self-sufficiency and simplicity that had been missing in my life for a long time. There is a great deal of satisfaction in working with proper equipment. I was wearing a thermal undershirt, buttoned walking shirt, fleece and jacket, cargo pants, ski hat, gloves and sunglasses. It was only a couple of degrees above zero, but there was no wind.

  I was walking the Camino for financial reasons, though it would be disingenuous to pretend I did not see it also as a personal challenge. Nineteen hundred kilometres on foot pulling a load was a significant physical undertaking. That said, I had not envisaged any great psychological impact. I had dismissed Monsieur Chevalier’s prediction that the journey would change me. But in the first kilometre, it did. I felt good: independent and free.

  My situation was well short of the middle-class portfolio of house, car and money in the bank that had once been my lot. But it was an advance on six months earlier, when I had owned precisely nothing, was carrying a bit of lard and was, in retrospect, an emotional mess. I wondered how some of my peers would have fared if they had found themselves jobless and skint at fifty-two. Jonathan, for instance.

  We had sat in the living room of his Georgian pile, where I had taken up temporary residence, drinking an eighteen-year-old Macallan, his attempt at an appropriate drink for an occasion that needed marking but not celebrating. He raised his glass and did his best.

  ‘At least she didn’t clean you out.’

  ‘Not through lack of trying.’

  ‘Come on, Martin.’

  The documents were in my bag, fresh from my final meeting with the solicitor. I had a healthy bank balance, partial compensation for losing my house and everything in it. And having to walk away from my job, since Julia’s choice of lover had been my head of department.

  ‘She’d have taken the lot if she could,’ I said.

  ‘I understand how you’re feeling. But that’s not true. I know Julia.’

  ‘Did you know she was screwing Rupert?’

  ‘People make mistakes. Julia…most people want the other person to get on with their life.’ Jonathan paused. ‘Or to forgive them, Martin.’

  ‘Bit late for that.’

  ‘Who’s being vindictive now?’

  ‘I think I’m entitled to feel a tiny bit put out.’

  ‘All I’m saying is that she’s not the sort of person who would leave you with nothing.’

  ‘For Chrissakes, Jon. You don’t know what she’s like. I thought I knew her.’

  ‘I’m starting to think I do know her better than you.’

  There was a way to shatter his rose-coloured glasses. I took out my chequebook and wrote a cheque in Julia’s name for the balance of my account.

  ‘Fifty quid says she cashes it.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous.’

  ‘You said she wouldn’t take it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t, but don’t tempt fate.’

  The idea had been spontaneous, but now it seemed absolutely the right thing to do. My entire net worth was on a small piece of paper that I could have screwed up and held in my fist.

  ‘I’m not tempting fate. I’m tempting her. If she cashes it, I’ll know I’m right. Fifty quid and no more of your “faults on both sides” crap.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m going to send it anyway. That’s a promise. So, fifty quid or not?’

  ‘Make it five hundred. Julia’s all right.’

  Julia wasn’t all right. But Jonathan was. He insisted on paying me the five hundred pounds, which covered my travel to France.

  My sense of wellbeing carried me halfway up the long incline. I stopped to remove my woollen hat, and looked back to see that I was at an impressive height above the farmland. At 2 p.m., about five kilometres short of Tramayes, I stopped and finished the coffee from my thermos. I took the opportunity to check the cart’s wheel mounting. I was experimenting with not using a split pin to secure one of the nuts, because I wanted as many of the parts as possible to be available from bicycle shops, which in Europe are thick on the ground.

  I was feeling fresh and my map-less GPS told me that I was averaging four kilometres per hour. If I could hold this pace, I could keep going and make Grosbois by around 8 p.m. It would be a stretch, but I would pull back one of my lost days and complete a brilliant start to the journey.

  I rang the bed and breakfast in Tramayes and cancelled. I didn’t bother rebooking in Grosbois. I had previously reserved a room for this date, so I knew they were open. We could sort it out when I arrived.

  Tramayes had the usual French small-town line-up of hairdresser, florist, boulangerie, boucherie and bar. There was also a hotel-restaurant with a few diners finishing lunch, and I decided I’d earned a proper coffee. The proprietor fetched her husband, in chef’s hat and apron, to look at the cart.

  ‘Do you see many walkers this time of year?’ I asked. He had a front-row view of the Chemin.

  ‘You are the second today. Maybe the second for the year. Most come in the spring and summer. Where are you going tonight?’

  ‘Grosbois.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s a long way. Better to stay here.’

  I was tempted. My legs had stiffened and I would have been glad to call it a day. What swung it in the end was the desire not to muck around my bed-and-breakfast host again. And to stay in another place in the same town would have been pretty poor form.

  11

  ZOE

  When Keith died I was reading Camille’s letter, on perfumed paper, the handwriting a tribute to years of knuckle-rapping by French nuns.

  ‘Zoe.’ I didn’t recognise the voice on the phone at first.

  ‘Jennifer? Have you got a cold?’ I asked the girl who worked in the store with my husband.

  Keith was the same age as me. At the funeral, I couldn’t fathom why the universe had sent me this. I sat in the front pew in uncomprehending silence between my daughters, with Keith’s mother on the other side of Lauren. Keith had no children of his own.

  ‘Don’t worry about anything,’ Lauren had told me. ‘You can stay with us and we’ll give you plenty to keep you occupied.’

  Tessa had just hugged me.

  I expected I would make sense of it all in the coming weeks and months. I would pack Keith’s clothes, go through all the photo albums and cry myself to sleep in sheets that would still smell of him.

  It didn’t happen that way. Albie, our accountant and an old buddy of Keith’s, stopped by the day after the funeral.

  ‘What do you mean, no money?’ I said.

  Keith had a shoe business. It was not big, but it had given us enough to pay the bills and the girls’ college fees.

  ‘Your joint account is frozen,’ said Albie, avoiding my eyes. ‘He’s been in trouble for a while. He mortgag
ed the house to borrow money. You signed the papers.’

  ‘I didn’t…’

  ‘He didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘Do we owe people?’

  ‘My best guess is that you’ll be able to cover the debts—just. After you sell up. But I can’t promise.’

  I walked through the house and started saying goodbye to everything. I would miss it for the memories, the shared history. And I thought about the timing of Camille’s letter—what message I should take from it.

  It took me a week to tell Keith’s employees they were out of a job and get rid of all the stuff I didn’t need. It took me another week to organise my immediate future. I checked my personal bank account, where I deposited my income from the wellness centre, the occasional massage client and the even more infrequent sale of a watercolour. The best deal my travel agent could get left me with two thousand dollars.

  When I called Lauren to tell her I was leaving for France, she was speechless—maybe for the first time in her life.

  ‘Albie is selling the house. You’ve got a key,’ I said.

  ‘Mom, you’re losing it.’

  ‘Right now, it’s what I need.’

  ‘You need to be with us!’ She kept talking but my mind drifted. She was an events organiser—an everything organiser. She would love having children. I didn’t want to be one of them.

  ‘Lauren,’ I said. ‘This is a difficult time for us all. But I need space. Camille is an old friend.’

  I had barely talked to the girls about the year with Camille at college and the issues with my mother. It took all my self-control not to beat up on their father, Manny.

  If I told Lauren that I was walking the Camino, she’d be sure I’d lost it.

  Though my third day on the road was as long as the previous two combined, the weather was mild and the terrain easy. The lighter backpack made a difference but there was no way I could do twenty-five miles in a day.

  LA isn’t a walking city. You drive to the store for milk, even if it’s on the next corner. I finished the final uphill section into Grosbois feeling beat.